William the Conqueror - King I of England

[Guest]

Hello all,

During my years questing for my wife's family history, I was recently surprised to find that she is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. Needless to say, I am very excited about this this. I am going to surprise her for the holiday season, but want to make sure I do my homework first.


Would she have any type of survivor rights to estates or exclusive family data?


Thank you!

[Katarzyna]

Oh this is interesting. I have never encountered anyone yet who has managed to get back so far. I assume then that you have all the source material ie the Birth, Marriage and Death certificates for every single generation back to 1837 and then copies of all the baptisms, Marriages and deaths and Wills of every generation from all the various Record Offices right back to King William. Oh and Manorial Records - very important.
WOW I'm amazed. If you have all that documentation then - Survival rights I doubt that and not sure what you mean by Exclusive family data??

[clematised]

Have you been following all those Ancestry people who get back that far without correct research and follow like sheep believing every word or has it taken you many years of hard slog and a vast amount of money to prove it, I very much doubt it.

Edna

[SmallTownGirl]

I think you'll find that we can be quite a sceptical bunch here.

Just sayin'

STG

[Olde Crone Holden]

In the vanishingly unlikly event that you could prove your wife is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror to the satisfaction of the college of heralds and the royal genealogists, I am sorry to tell you that she won't be the ONLY descendant and therefore any unclaimed royal property (and how much of that do you think there is?) from the 1100s will have to be shared between millions of people.

Don't waste your time looking for a connection you simply cannot prove.

OC

[Guy]

Hello all,

During my years questing for my wife's family history, I was recently surprised to find that she is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. Needless to say, I am very excited about this this. I am going to surprise her for the holiday season, but want to make sure I do my homework first.


Would she have any type of survivor rights to estates or exclusive family data?


Thank you!

First as William the Conqueror was a bastard not only could he not inherit anything he could not leave anything either as the law stood at that time.
So forget about survivor rights to estates or exclusive family data.
Cheers
Guy

[Richard in Perth]

Well of course your wife is descended from William the Conqueror! Just about everybody with any English heritage is - in fact there will be thousands of different lines of descent that connect him to her, to you, to me and to everyone else. In the same way, everyone with any European heritage is a direct descendant of Charlemagne, the 8th century Frankish ruler. In fact, everyone who was alive at the time of Charlemagne is either a direct ancestor of everyone alive today, or is an ancestor of nobody at all (i.e. their line has died out). We tend to use the analogy of a tree when we are visualising our ancestry, but in reality it is more of a tangled mesh, with thousands of possible paths to get from any individual in the past to any individual alive in the present day. Try googling "pedigree collapse" and "most recent common ancestor" for more information.

As to whether you can prove a specific link, that is a different question. I disagree with several of the comments above, since the royal line is one of the most well-documented and best studied genealogies available. Therefore, you just need to establish your wife's descent from a person of proven royal descent - it will then follow that she is descended from William the Bastard via that person's documented line. Of course, the further back in time that her purported link to royalty occurred, the harder it will be to prove!

[Bertie]

Was just about to make the same point as Richard in the second para of his post #7 but he beat me to it!

[Olde Crone Holden]

Richard and Bertie

If a person is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror, that does not make them royal, necessarily. Today's royal family does not claim DIRECT descent from WtC.

However, I agree that in order to prove you ARE a direct descendant, you will need to hook into the royal pedigree at some point, or at the very least into an armigerous and otherwise very old family. It does not sound from the OP as if he has.

OC

[Janet]

Hello all,

During my years questing for my wife's family history, I was recently surprised to find that she is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. Needless to say, I am very excited about this this. I am going to surprise her for the holiday season, but want to make sure I do my homework first.


Would she have any type of survivor rights to estates or exclusive family da


Thank you!

I would love to know how you managed to get through the Commonwealth period for marriages of the mid 1600's as so few of these survived the ravages of time? I am lucky enough to have a copy of just one in my possession, but even that was not enough to get me back any further than 1633 where unfortunately for me they disappear from the village, and the name of Noble, which name I understand did come over with William the Conqueror, is rather profilific in Northamptonshire in the 1600's, and all seem to have the name William, Richard, Henry and John so I am finding it difficult to get back further. You mut also have been very clever to have been able to read the wills and Manorial evidence. Having studied both French and Latin I found the Manorial Rolls of the 1500's very challenging as my command of old English is not very good, although I did manage to pick out some names of interest, but nothing to prove they are mine, though the books were very interesting.

Janet

[Christine in Herts]

It seems a bit late to add that you are welcome to FTF. I'm afraid that - as has already been mentioned - although the FTF bunch are essentially very friendly and helpful, they are also very sceptical of claims of trees going a long way back or that link into a royal or other special line. It's not that they don't thinks it's a possible heritage, just that we all know how difficult it can be to get back even a couple of generations with any confidence.

If you really have got back so far, with all the essential documentary back-up, it will be exciting for all of us!

Good hunting!
Christine

[Olde Crone Holden]

57j2olds

http://www.william1.co.uk/whats_new.htm

Is this the website you have found? If so, take great care. Although each individual fact may be correct, the way the facts are strung together may not be correct. I am concerned that there are no sources for most of the information and although it may be "easy" to check early dates etc, you really do need to get to the original source to check. Just because something appears five hundred times as a historical fact doesn't make it reliable - 499 people may have copied one incorrect fact!

Personally, I wouldn't waste my time with this tree. William the Conqueror lived a thousand years ago, that's roughly 30 generations ago and he is therefore just one of MILLIONS of ancestors that your wife has.

OC

[Richard in Perth]

Richard and Bertie

If a person is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror, that does not make them royal, necessarily. Today's royal family does not claim DIRECT descent from WtC.

Oh yes they do - Elizabeth II is the 25th-great grandchild of William I via at least 8 different lines of descent, and is a 32nd-great grandchild via the senior direct royal line of descent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent..._the_Conqueror

Cheers,
Richard

[Richard in Perth]

^ Oops - she is actually a 22nd-great grandchild; i.e. she is the 25th generation, counting William as generation number 1.

Interestingly, she also claims direct descent from Egbert of Wessex (1st king of England), Alfred the Great, Harold Godwinson (William's opponent at the Battle of Hastings), Kenneth MacAlpin (1st king of Scotland), Sweyn Forkbeard (king of Denmark), as well as several Welsh and Irish princes from pre-Norman times. She is also undoubtedly descended from millions of ordinary peasants, just as we all are - but of course that isn't advertised on the royal website

[Olde Crone Holden]

Richard

Sorry, yes, you are correct of course. I was thinking in my mind that "direct descent" always means down the male line left hand side of a drop tree! And they were all ordinary peasants until they jostled opr fought their way to royalty.

OC

[keldon]

Oh yes they do - Elizabeth II is the 25th-great grandchild of William I via at least 8 different lines of descent, and is a 32nd-great grandchild via the senior direct royal line of descent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent..._the_Conqueror

And the Wikipedia article itself reveals the problem with all of this: "This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources."

[Olde Crone Holden]

Phil

Indeed.

In fact, if you look at the tree on the website I've linked, the very first generation (children of William) presents a problem which historians have been arguing over for centuries - whether one (or two) of his daughters existed at all.

OC

[margaretmarch]

I can't see that the original poster has been back on line to see what we have said since the first post.

Do you think someone has been having some fun with us?

Margaret

[Anne in Carlisle]

I did wonder that when I read the first post! There is no doubt about FTF members' opinions though!!
Anne

[Olde Crone Holden]

Yes, I wondered too if it was a joke. But I often wonder that about posts which turn out to be deadly serious!

However, as the post can be picked up by google it's best that the answers to the post treat it as serious just in case anyone else does earnestly believe they are direct descendants of whoever on the strength of an online tree.

OC